The miracle of pain relievers, best team nicknames and more

We take a lot of miracles for granted: Electricity. The internet. Running water. GPS. Morgan Freeman's voice.

But here's one that continues to amaze me every time I need it: How pain relievers can help anything.

Got a headache? Take a pill. It gets better. Got a sore knee? Take a pill. It gets better. Got arthritis? Take a pill, it gets better.

Those pills – Advil and Tylenol at my house – don't "cure" anything. But they make everything better. The most amazing thing to me (which can probably be explained by a scientist, who would insist it's not a miracle): How does the Advil pill I take know that my knee is sore rather than my back? Or how does my Tylenol pill know to take care of a headache and not a fever? How do those pills know what part of my body to help?

I'm sure there's a rational explanation, but I'd prefer to just accept it as what it appears to be. A miracle.

Those little pills are really, really smart and helpful.

On to the topics du jour . . .

• • •

Five best major sports team nicknames, based on coolness of the name and how well it fits with the city:

5. Philadelphia 76ers. The Sixers leaned in on the obvious history of Philadelphia and the Declaration of Independence. Their colors are red, white and blue. There's no subtlety and it's fantastic.

4. Miami Dolphins. The combination of the team name and colors (aqua, orange and blue) reeks of South Florida.

3. Toronto Maple Leafs. Their nickname reflects the entire country (although it should be Maple Leaves). That's pretty great.

2. Pittsburgh Steelers. Seems normal now because we've heard it forever (in the same way the old nickname of the Washington, D.C., team seemed normal through use). But Pittsburgh is the steel city. The logo is based on a U.S. Steel logo! It would be like the 49ers calling themselves the Googles and having a Google logo on their helmet.

1. Milwaukee Brewers. Milwaukee (along with St. Louis) is the beer capital of America and the Brewers is a perfect nickname. And what a logo: A combination of "M" and "B" that make up a baseball mitt and ball. The team name also lends itself to the nickname of "The Brew Crew" and sparked Bernie Brewer, one of the most iconic mascots in sports.

• • •

Daylight saving time ended today and now we enter 13 weeks of darkness.

But a reminder: Standard time (a misnomer, since it only lasts 18 of the 52 weeks of the year) ends March 12. So just 17 more Sundays like today.

• • •

A few weeks ago, I went to the doctor for my annual physical. They measured me and . . . they said I was 5 feet, 11 inches tall. I was 5-11!

I've been 5-10½ since high school, so this is big news. It may be that I kept on my shoes or that I said their measuring bar touched my head when it was really just touching my hair. It may be a mistake or perhaps they rounded up.

Or it may be that I'm growing again and am on pace to be 6 feet tall in two more years. If you think this is wrong, don't argue with me. Argue with math. And medicine.

I'm going to take an Advil and see if it knows I want to grow.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

There's a new island and it could be paradise with the right plan

Are you interested in oceanfront property? Privacy? A cozy spot in the South Pacific?

Allow me to tell you about an island near Tonga, about 5,300 miles from Fairfield. Surrounded by beautiful ocean water, it's 8 acres–although that size is a bit fluid. The island 50 feet above sea level, which is higher than Suisun City or Fairfield, so no worry about flooding. And it's a new property!

Very new. Weeks old, as a matter of fact.

New! Room to grow! Cute fixer-upper! The real estate terms flow for the world's latest island.

The new island emerged after a volcano on the Home Reef seamount erupted Sept. 10. Within a day, an unnamed island (more on that later) emerged and began to grow. Soon it was an acre. Then 8 acres.

The island – technically, it's an atoll, but let's call it an island – isn't unique. Smart people point out that islands have been produced during previous submarine volcanoes in that region, the most recent in 2006. Many of the islands gradually disappear, but not all. Some remain. A nearby island lasted from 1995 until 2020, which of course was the year when everything in the world went bad.

But still.

A new island. Eight acres of waterfront land. South Pacific. Near Tonga (to help out, Tonga is between Hawaii and New Zealand. It's southwest of American Samoa, southeast of Fiji. Tonga is actually 170 islands, so maybe the new island could be added without much hassle. Tonga has has about 100,000 residents).

Think of living there! You could build a temporary shelter (I suspect you'd need to bring your own wood), then build a permanent home (again, you probably need to import wood to the new, middle-of-water island). But you've got a house, but then consider this option: You build a small port and begin promoting your island as "the newest landmass on Earth" and "the new Pacific paradise."

This is where the name comes in. If you want to be isolated and don't like tourists, the name doesn't matter. Name the island after yourself or after your favorite musical group ("Welcome to Van Halen," "Welcome to Rascal Flatts").

But . . .  if you plan to build it as the world's newest land mass and a holiday dream spot, consider the possibilities.

What about Paradise Island? How about Shangri-La? How about Utopia?

People would flock to your island. It's an island in the Pacific!

Another option is to give it a name that sounds like an existing vacation dream spot. You could call it Mowie. Or Taheetee. Or Cancoon.

Granted, there will be some challenges to this plan. Starting with the soil. It's not sandy. It's not even dirty. It's something else, according to an article in The Washington Post.

“It’s more like a large layer of ash, steam and pumice over the ocean,” Rennie Vaiomounga, a geologist at Tonga Geological Services, told The Post. Apparently,  you can't even walk on the island (will you sink in? Fall through? I'm not sure), but it's likely that if and when the island sticks around, it will solidify and you'll be able to walk on it.

Forget all that. This may be the opportunity of a lifetime! A private island in the South Pacific. I'm not sure who owns it, but I suspect you may be able to simply stake a claim if no one is there (I'm not clear on international law, but I've watched old movies), then build paradise for tourists.

One last thought: Stanhope Island sounds good, right? Give me credit for the idea.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

 

 

Mobile phones are so much better than landlines, except . . .

It's been about 15 years since Mrs. Brad and I got rid of our landline telephone due to persistent telemarketers and our realization that no one would call us on it.

We'd been using our cell phones for years when we literally pulled the plug on our home phone.

Like 99% of Americans, we don't miss landlines, but sometimes, when I get particularly wistful, I think back to the days way before mobile phones and realize there is some romance to the old landline days. The old landline days, before persistent telemarketers became a thing.

It may be a misty water-colored memory, but there are some things that we've lost with the switch to 100% mobile phones.

Mysterious callers. I never had caller ID on my landline (for much of my life, caller ID didn't exist). The result was a mystery that is probably inconceivable to Gen Z: The phone would ring and you wouldn't know who it was. Maybe one of your friends? Maybe (in my case) one of your sisters' friends? Maybe your school? In a house with multiple children (four in my case), there was always a rush to answer the phone to see who it was. A mystery!

Knowing people's numbers. How many phone numbers do you know? For me, the answer is zero, because, like you, everyone I call is listed in my contacts. If not, I punch in their number once, then add them to my contacts.  But I bet you can recite your home phone number from when you were a child. You still know it! Think of all the phone numbers you remember from when you had to dial them. When I was a sports editor, there were probably 100 phone numbers (from family members to friends to coaches to random sources) I could dial from memory. Now? There are zero. All that memory space is now taken up by passwords.

Deciding how long to wait before hanging up. This was particularly true before answering machines. You call someone's house and the phone rings. And rings. And rings. Do you hang up after five rings? Eight? Ten? I was taught to hang up after four, which seems impatient. Now it's not an issue. You go to voicemail after the number of rings the person picked.

Dialing challenges. Comedian Louis CK has a bit in which he jokes about how much he used to dislike people who had an 8, 9 or 0 in their phone number because you had to dial them and it took too long. A dial! You had to put your finger in a hole and spin it, then let it return before dialing the next number.

Wrong numbers. You occasionally get the wrong numbers now, but it's almost always because someone changed their number. In the old days, you'd dial the wrong number and someone would tell you, "You have the wrong number." Occasionally you'd dial it again because you thought you may have misdialed and you'd get the same person, who would be irritated that you'd called again. Oh, the golden days of random wrong numbers.

Now we don't have to remember any numbers or dial our phones. We rarely get the wrong numbers. We always know who is calling us.

It's a much better world and we wouldn't go back. But you have to admit: Phone dials were a pretty interesting technology.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

 

It's time for the Toy Hall of Fame to honor legendary Nerf

This is Nerf's year.

There hasn't been an easier slam dunk for the National Toy Hall of Fame since that uncontested dunk I made on my bedroom Nerfoop in eighth grade (That's what it was called, not Nerf Hoop.). There hasn't been an easier choice since I decided to fire the original Nerf ball at my older sister when she walked into the living room so I could make her flinch.

This is Nerf's year.

The National Toy Hall of Fame announced the 12 nominees for this year's class last month, including the collective "Nerf Toys." It's been more than 20 years since the second-greatest honor for toys began (honor No. 1: A key role in a "Toy Story" movie) and Nerf isn't in. Ridiculous.

If you ask me, the original Nerf ball should be in the Hall of Fame, as should Nerfoop, the Nerf football and the various Nerf guns.

This year, the entire Nerf family is up for a spot. Come on.

Think about how Nerf changed the toy game. It was like how recordings changed the music business or how mobile phones changed communication. Thanks to Nerf, you could suddenly throw balls indoors (original advertising slogan: "Throw it indoors; you can't damage lamps or break windows. You can't hurt babies or old people." Their advertising included that you can't hurt old people. Brilliant.).

Thanks to Nerf, you could put a hoop on any door and shoot baskets (in my first apartment, shared with three friends, we had a huge kitchen, so we put Nerfoops on opposite ends and played full-court basketball).

Thanks to Nerf, any 8-year-old could grip a football and throw it to their friends. And except for when it got so wet that the Nerf football turned into a sponge, it was easy to catch.

This year's 12 nominees include Lite-Brite, the magical art tool that allowed you to make your own pictures (or write dirty words) on a screen; Spirograph, the cool shape-making art toy; Bingo, the game beloved by everyone from age 4 to 104; Pound Puppies, the cause of mall fights between 1980s parents at Christmas time; Pinata, which really is more of a food source than a toy; Top, which has amused children for millennia; and Masters of the Universe action figures. There are others, but who cares? Only three will make the Hall

An educated guess is that voters will lean toward younger toys and induct Masters of the Universe. Either Bingo or the Top should be in for longevity. But the dead-certain, it's-not-a-Hall-of-Fame-Without-It toy is Nerf.

That the Toy Hall of Fame has inducted 78 toys since 1998 and left out Nerf is like the Baseball Hall of Fame inducting 78 members and leaving out Lou Gehrig.

Nerf is the Lou Gehrig of toys. Durable, honorable, consistent. OK, a little too much baseball there, but you get the point.

As someone who had countless Nerfoop dunks and free throws, who played with Nerf footballs after neighborhood dogs tore out a piece and who threw the O.G. Nerf ball at all three of my sisters repeatedly, I say it's time. This is the year to put Nerf next to the legends of toys, making it a Hall of Famer alongside Barbie, Jump Rope, Checkers, the Skateboard, Puppet and the other mainstay of my childhood, the Wiffle Ball.

Dear  Toy Hall of Fame voters: It's time for Nerf. Don't make me fire one at you so you flinch like my sisters did.

Repeatedly.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Comparison to goldfish attention span seems like a . . .

It's been several years since Microsoft famously quoted a study that said the attention span of humans had dropped to nine seconds, less than the attention span of a goldfish.

(Side point: I'm not sure how they determined the attention span of a goldfish. And even if they did, what is competing for the attention of a goldfish? They don't even use social media and they don't have Netflix. Back to the column . . .)

That famed data point . . . that our attention span is nine seconds, shorter than a goldfish, has been updated. Unfortunately, it's bad news: Our attention span is now reportedly 8.25 seconds. It's dropping fast.

(Side point: The world record for the 100-meter dash is 9.58 seconds, set by Usain Bolt in 2009. That record has stood for 13 years, the longest period without a new record since it stood at 9.95 seconds from 1968 to 1983. So our attention span is going down faster than the world record in the 100. Back to the column . . .)

The fact that our attention span is shrinking (and doing so quickly) is a reason for concern. Real concern, because this isn't the first drop. In fact, a 2000 study set the period at 12 seconds, meaning it's dropped by nearly one-third in just 22 years.

(Side point: The greatest athletes to wear No. 22 are Emmitt Smith, Clayton Kershaw and Clyde Drexler. That's a surprisingly short list for a common number, right? Giants fans, of course, will point out Will Clark was No. 22.  Alas, he's not as great as Kershaw. Back to the column . . .)

When you hear that our attention span is getting shorter, there's no shortage of things to blame. For instance, the average American looks at their phone 344 times a day.

(Side point: This is presumably the mean number for Americans. Remember mean, mode and median from math? Mean is what we usually call "average," median is the number with an equal number more and less and mode is the number that occurs most frequently. I think those are correct. If not, take the median of my answers. Get it? Back to the column . . .)

Of course, any study of our attention span comes with some caveats. First of all, skeptics point out flaws in the study. Also, scientists point out that "attention span" isn't something that can be measured with a single figure, since we pay attention differently to different things. We may focus clearly and for a long time on an important conversation and not keep focus while viewing YouTube.

(Side point: Think of how much Google and YouTube have changed our culture. Here's some perspective: Google launched as a search engine in 1998. YouTube launched in 2005. Neither has been around 25 years, but nearly 100% of our population knows what they are. Back to the column . . .)

It turns out that the first "study" about what we'll now call "the goldfish myth" was done by a marketing company. The purpose was to encourage short bursts of information. Bulleted lists. Quick videos. They had a reason to emphasize humans having a short attention span: It was a marketing ploy!

(Side point: Remember when categories of food did marketing campaigns? "The other white meat" and "Got milk?" Do any food types market themselves anymore? Does the squash industry promote itself as "the other yellow vegetable?" Back to the column . . .)

So next time you hear that humans have a shorter attention span than goldfish, correct the person who says it. It was a marketing campaign and what could possibly distract a goldfish?

(Side point: Try to stay focused while doing so).

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

 

We're outnumbered by ants and it's not even remotely close

In what will come as no surprise to Solano County residents, there are a lot of ants in the world.

A lot.

An estimated 20 quadrillion. Seriously. That's the estimate of the number of ants by a group of scientists from the University of Hong Kong (which locals presumably call UHK) in a paper on the subject recently released by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Here's how 20 quadrillion looks in digits: 20,000,000,000,000,000. That's 20,000 trillion, or more than the number of Wade brothers who have their columns published in the Daily Republic.

In the study, the scientists looked at nearly 500 studies. They concluded that the total mass of ants on Earth was 12 megatons of dry carbon, which is apparently how scientists measure animals' biomass.

Do you understand dry carbon megatons? Me neither, but here's how that was explained: If all the living ants were plucked from the ground and put on a scale, they would outweigh all the wild birds and mammals. Combined. Remember, blue whales are mammals. So are elephants and the person who sat in the middle seat next to you the last time you flew. Combined, all the mammals and birds on Earth weigh less than all the ants.

For anyone who has endured an invasion of ants – around this region, it seems to most frequently happen during a heat wave or during the rainiest times (or, frankly, anytime) – that number is high but not outrageous. Recently, Mrs. Brad and I endured a two-front war with the ants at Casa de Stanhope, as the bug invaded the kitchen and a bedroom. They just kept coming and coming, like a zombie apocalypse. We tried to kill the explorers, but it didn't matter. More ants explored, ultimately leading their six-legged friends on a march through our house.

I had a curious realization: The ants I'm most likely to personally kill (using my fingers to squash them) are the explorers. They're the Lewis and Clark ants who set out to determine where the rest of their community should go. Once the mass of ants comes, it's overwhelming and I either spray them or we put out poison they allegedly take back to their colony.

But I respect the hustle of the Lewis and Clark ants (by the way, I call them that not because of 19th-century explorers Lewis and Clark, but after Darren Lewis and Will Clark, two mainstays of the late-1980s Giants). Really, my vengeance should be targeted against the zombies who follow them and swarm our garbage can or anything left on a counter.

But back to the ant census. While 20 quadrillion ants or 12 megatons of dry carbon are obviously huge numbers, they don't really mean anything to us. A better way was presented in their study: There are 2.5 million ants for every person on earth.

Two point five million per person. That means you can multiply the number of people in your household by 2.5 million and . . . realize you're fighting a losing battle.

The realization that we're outnumbered (and by outnumbered, I mean it's not even close) is offset by the recognition that ants perform a valuable service. They aerate the ground. They pull seeds underground, where they can sprout. They eat dead wood in forests to keep those areas healthy. They serve as food for countless other animals.

Ants form the backbone of Earth. It's worth remembering.

Because even if it weren't true, we're not winning this war. The ants have us outnumbered.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

A relative way to remember our solar system's planets

Astronomy can be confusing, but if you don't know the difference between a random planet and Uranus (hah! The inevitable joke!), I've got a trick to remember the planets in our solar system.

The eight planets (nine if you count Pluto) are like an extended family.

While the sun is the combined grandmother/grandfather around which many (both healthy and dysfunctional) families rotate, the planets are each a type of cousin. You are Earth in this discussion. The others? Starting from those closest to the sun:

Mercury and Venus, the two closest planets to the sun are our cool cousins who generally blow off family events because they're doing things beyond our imagination (following their favorite band on an around-the-world trip; hiking the Pacific Crest Trail; living in a trailer in Mexico for a year). Mercury and Venus are different and a little crazy (did you know Venus rotates in the opposite direction of the other planets?). They're both way too hot to explore. We secretly like them, but don't know them. They're our cool cousin planets.

Mars is our closest cousin. Mars spent two weeks at our house every year when we were young. We were in Mars' wedding party and vice-versa. We talk about taking vacations together with Mars, although we haven't done it. If we were to die an early planetary death, Mars would be asked to be a pallbearer and to speak at the funeral.

Jupiter is the older, slightly intimidating cousin (Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and has 63 moons and a ring system we can faintly see). We've always known Jupiter existed, but it feels more like an adult than most of the other planets. Jupiter didn't pick on Mars and us when we were younger planets, because it didn't interact with us. However, we still watch it. From afar.

Saturn is the crazy cousin who we don't really understand but admire. It's the best-looking of all the cousins because of its rings, but it also has a cool name and is mysterious. Like Jupiter, it has more than 60 moons, but we suspect Saturn's moons are bizarre in some way. If Saturn shows up at a family reunion, it's dressed differently than anyone and listening to a kind of music we've never heard.

Uranus is our oddball cousin. The name, for self-evident reasons. But Uranus also spins on its side – different than any other planet. The entire time we've been in the same solar system, the other planets have snickered at Uranus' name and the way it rotates. Meanwhile, Uranus stays consistent. It comes to every family gathering and talks about science fiction that we don't understand.

Neptune is cold and distant, both as a relative and as a planet. We know it's there but don't know when it will be anywhere near us. Most of us don't know much about it (Was Neptune in the Army? Does it live in Nevada? Montana? Tennessee? Was it ever married? Divorced?). Neptune is part of the family, but a distant part. Neptune may come to a family gathering once a decade and when it leaves, we know nothing more about it.

Pluto is not a planet, officially. It's the "cousin" who is really a neighbor who still shows up at our family reunions. Kind of the Cousin Oliver of planets.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

How fifth-graders 50 years ago had more common sense than billionaires

Billionaires: They're just like us!

In this case, they're just like I was in fifth grade.

Consider this: Billionaires are increasingly planning new, utopian cities. About 50 years ago, I worked with classmates to create a new, utopian island. We were 10 and we knew it was a silly exercise, but they're serious.

Proposed utopian cites are a real thing. An article on Axios shares the details of a city called Telosa that will be built in Utah, Nevada or Arizona (who can tell the difference, right?) by billionaire Marc Lore. Lore is a guy who apparently builds and sells companies. He sold Jet.com to Walmart and Diapers.com to Amazon. I'd never heard of him before this, either.

Lore plans for 5 million people to ultimately live in Telosa, with 50,000 folks moving there by 2030 (less than eight years from now!). According to the report, Lore is currently looking for 150,000 acres on which to build the city, which will have autonomous electric vehicles, no on-street parking and 36 districts that have everything you need within a short walk. There will be vast amounts of renewable energy and some sort of "drought-proof" water system.

Lore isn't the only billionaire with such plans. According to Axios, Bill Gates wants to build a "smart city" called Belmont in the Arizona desert (if it's so smart, why is it in the Arizona desert?). Elon Musk wants to build a city called Starbase in southern Texas. I presume if Warren Buffet considered doing something similar, he would simply look around Omaha, Nebraska, and figure it was already utopian.

American billionaires aren't alone in this dream. Toyota is building a model city in Japan, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is building a city in Saudi Arabia and Tech company Tencent  is building a city in China. They all have the same thing in common. Each of these billionaires or companies thinks they can use smart technology to make a utopian world, where everything runs well and everyone gets along. Most of the cities have some plan for the perfect government, too.

Of course, they forget that every such attempt in history has failed. Movies show us how it ends up: With some powerful group in charge, exploiting people while everyone wears monochromatic jumpsuits until a traveler from the past or future finally rallies the people to rebel.

It's equally inspiring and terrifying that people who are good at business think they can build a utopian society.

My classmates and I had the same view, but it was more practical from a 10-year-old's perspective. The island we imagined had volcanoes that erupted with edible chocolate, trees that grew candy and wells full of soda. Kids were in charge of everything. Everyone played and ate sweets every day. It was an island, so it was protected from the adults who presumably ran the rest of the world.

Of course, that wouldn't work. There would be problems that would have to be solved. We knew that our invented island wasn't practical, it was just an assignment from a creative teacher.

Who knew that 50 years later, billionaires would have similar plans, but would lack the common sense of a 10-year-old?

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

 

Making a shaky case for the need for adults to wear watches

Wearing a regular watch every day has become akin to wearing a fedora or using a landline. It marks you as outdated.

The standard watch (not a fitness watch) is going out of style. Every year, the percentage of watch-wearers goes down–the latest numbers indicate that less than one-third of people wear watches every day and most of those are the aforementioned fitness watches.

Oh, sure, watches are still sometimes seen as stylish. But they're jewelry, like wearing cufflinks or tie clips were seen back in the day.

Wearing a watch every day as a way to keep track of time? It's slipping away, largely because we have smartphones.

When I was a kid, there were a few things that identified a grown man  based largely on my dad):

• An adult male always had a comb in his pocket.
• He also carried a handkerchief (disgusting in retrospect).
• He had a wallet, where he carried cash and various other things (I'm not sure what. I doubt that my dad had more than one credit card, so what else he had in there is a mystery.).
• And he wore a watch. Because how else would he be able to track how long it had been since he'd had his last cigarette or made the last sexist/racist joke to male co-workers?

I attempted to grow into those standards as a teen. I carried a comb in junior high and high school, though I rarely used it. I briefly carried a handkerchief. I carried a wallet, where I kept my student body card, a couple of dollars and a few other things (library card? Baseball cards? Pictures of myself? It's a mystery.).

But those things faded. I stopped carrying a comb. And a hanky.

Wallets have faded greatly, but are still around. We now have digital money and digital IDs, but you still need to carry your driver's license somewhere (I presume we'll soon have digital driver's licenses). Many people in their 20s don't carry a wallet.

The watch is disappearing, because, of course, why wear a watch when you have a phone?

Here are two reasons:

• The first is that it's much, much easier to look at your left wrist when you want to see what time it is than to dig a phone out of your pocket. Pulling out a phone isn't like completing a triathlon, but still, a watch is less work. Watches are good for lazy people.
• But the most important reason to wear a watch is that it signifies that you're an adult and you're serious about life. It shows that you're professional and have grown up. Having a watch (particularly a metal one that expands and contracts) shows that you've grown up, for crying out loud! They have to respect you as an adult!

Wait.

Maybe my watch love is just a secret way to overcome my childhood fear of growing up  but never being taken seriously.

Mind your own business! I can still tell you what time it is in a couple of seconds!

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Science has been lying to you, but we finally have a true millipede (plus)

We finally have a millipede that lives up to its name.

And it's still wrong: Milli means one thousand (even though it should mean "one million," right?). Pede means feet. A millipede should obviously have 1,000 feet, which would require 500 pairs of shoes, which would definitely make back-to-school shopping expensive for the Pede family.

Turns out, millipedes don't have 1,000 feet. Madness!

Until recently, the millipede species with the most legs had 750 legs, making it a .75 millipede if we want accuracy. However, insect scientists (by that, I mean scientists who study insects, although the idea of insects who have jobs as scientists is an interesting possibility.) found a change.

Eumillipes persephone came along.

Legs? It's got plenty. It's got the greatest legs since Joey Heatherton, which is a great line for anyone 80 and older. OK, the greatest legs since Beyonce. Or Justin Tucker, the Baltimore Ravens kicker who is seen as the best in the league at his position.

So, great legs. A lot of legs.

It has 1,306 legs. That's right, the first true millipede – actually, a mega-millipede, which would require (if my math is correct) 653 pairs of tiny shoes for a new school year.

Eumillipes persephone (that's the species' name) also has no eyes, which leaves open the possibility that its parents could buy cheap, ugly shoes and the 1,306-foot bug wouldn't know. Maybe that could save some money, which when you're buying 653 pairs of shoes, can really add up.

Scientists found eumillipes persephone below ground in Australia – about 200 feet below ground. The guys in white jackets were thrilled.

“We always hypothesized that there would be a ‘true’ millipede discovered someday,” said Jackson Means, a myriapodologist at the Virginia Museum of Natural History in an article on Vice.com. But the discovery of one with over 1,300 legs, almost double the previous leg count? “That was pretty astonishing,” he said.

You know what else is astonishing? That scientists and our teachers let us believe millipedes had 1,000 legs when they knew (or should have known) that wasn't true. It wasn't even close.

By the way, it's not the only such lie. Centipedes, which should have 100 feet (centi = 100) don't have that many. According to a random website I checked, centipedes range from 30 legs to 354. Hopefully, it's always an even number, or they might walk in a long circle.

But I digress. Centipedes don't have 100 legs. Millipedes don't have 1,000 legs (although eumillipes persephone has 1,306ish).

Do you know what else is true?

Strawberries and raspberries are not berries.

Koala bears are not bears.

Jellyfish are not made out of jelly and they aren't fish.

Guinea pigs are not pigs, nor are they from Guinea.

I guess I'd be even more upset if I didn't have sports to keep me straight. I know that no matter what happens, the Boston baseball team wears red socks, the Green Bay football team works during the week packing boxes and the Utah NBA team members all play jazz music.

But back to the main point. We now have our first true millipede, albeit one with an extra 306 legs.

You're now smarter. And the Pede family is out the money for several hundred pairs of tiny shoes.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.